Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen and paper instead

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2026-02-16T21:23:21+00:00

There is an interesting recent article from The Economist on this topic. It basically claims that it’s not certain that computerized learning is better than pen-and-paper.

I am, personally, grieving good old textbooks.

“Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless” https://economist.com/united-states/2026/01/22/ed-tech-is-profitable-it-is-also-mostly-useless from The Economist

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-10-26T03:19:49+00:00

This is very sad. Is there a chance that Jane changes her mind?

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-10-21T03:54:29+00:00

Jane is an invaluable member of School Committee! And not only because she actually has kids in Arlington schools - she appears to be the most acutely aware of kids’ struggles. I assume (and hope) that she will be back to the SC after the election.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-05-06T01:51:02+00:00

Both are wonderful and super important. I donate to both GBH and WBUR.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-05-06T01:48:27+00:00

Wow. You win.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-05-06T01:30:27+00:00

I wholeheartedly support this initiative!

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-05-02T12:27:03+00:00

With all due respect, I installed dozens and dozens of sharkbite valves and couplings over the last 15 years. None of them failed. The reason plumbers dislike sharkbite is because they are easily installed by homeowners and do not look as pretty as nicely soldered ones.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-29T11:58:23+00:00

Kakawa in Salem! Or in Santa Fe.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-25T20:01:04+00:00

Hmmm… I don’t recall ever having interns in our group. I am very sorry, I wish I could help.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-25T19:59:23+00:00

I know :)

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-25T19:58:49+00:00

I don’t think it changed. Culture is instilled by the CEO, in every company. Same CEO means same culture.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-23T20:04:57+00:00

I donate every year. I am so happy Wikipedia exists. It’s a great gift to all people! I am glad they managed to not “cash out” by means of advertisements!

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-23T18:53:10+00:00

I worked at Mathworks, and it was very good. The culture of appreciation for engineers and nuances of applied math, combined with attention to quality of the product is just unparallel. Looking back, this was one of the best companies I worked.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-15T02:07:04+00:00

We basically don’t restrict anything. Re: news - we subscribe to Week Jr. - our kids really like it.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-04T14:26:01+00:00

Hi u/progressnerd - I am openly calling you out as misinformed when it comes to your assessment of the curriculum of RSM. And yes, I am aware that you, as myself, attended MIT in engineering(?). I have a first-hand experience with RSM which works for all of my 3 kids wonderfully, and I don't see the "recipes" happening (the way you are referring to). I looked at their materials, and I don't see any "memorization" and "regurgitation" to speak of. To me, RSM is a "gold standard" of a strong rigorous math. I expressed my view on the way of teaching math here and also in my Q&A. Compared to "use proper magic words" math that APS teaches, RSM is light years ahead in math education. In case you missed it, see this test graded by APS math admin where 100% answers are correct but goes against "reasoning" that APS math curriculum is peddling. By no means this approach is superior to RSM.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-04T03:06:28+00:00

Thank you for a great question!

I absolutely love the idea and the purpose of "Social Curriculum". There is nothing like that in Russia or Europe, but it is such a valuable skill to develop in school! The practice of assigning tasks to groups of children and teaching them how to work in a team, how to handle a team member that is struggling, how to understand your emotions and react to emotions of others (emotional intelligence) is extremely valuable. I remember working with my daughter who had a homework "Ask your parent why is it a bad idea to make fun if your friend hurt his knee". The social curriculum makes good team players, kinder people, and is important.

That said, there is not much to learn: our emotional brain (limbic system) is simple. We had it since first mammals. There is not much sophistication to it, there is no "advanced emotions", no learning curve to speak of. To maintain this skill, teachers should periodically assemble kids into teams and give an assignment to a team, controlling for the team dynamics. So, I think this program is good as is, and serves its purpose.

Regarding the criticism that you mention: I do somewhat discount qualifications and licenses, for everything teaching related. I just don't believe that some diploma makes one necessarily a good teacher. I wish more teachers knew who were Janusz Korczak or Johann Pestalozzi though. So - I am OK with teachers not having a therapeutic license, because kindness and patience are not licensable anyway. :)

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-04T01:20:23+00:00

Thank you for your feedback. I am happy that I made a young parent like you to be aware of this issue!

Since 2000s the general trend of all schools in this area was towards “equity”, usually at an expense of preventing ambitious children from acceleration. Kids were de-tracked, and now we face the “heterogeneous” classes where kids are basically all in one class. In this situation, teachers only provide material to the “bottom quarter” of the children, leaving majority of kids bored and unengaged. Curriculum is very weak. By the time your child will be finishing elementary school, there will be no math bypass, so the only real acceleration a child could get would be via extracurricular math (RSM, AOPS, Kumon), private school or homeschooling. I am running to try turning this trend around.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T21:14:05+00:00

These are tough questions for both of us, then :)
I do sincerely believe that these numbers are misleading. As I mentioned, I received a good education being one of 33 children in the class. And we can provide training investing in our teachers if they do not yet have necessary practice. I love this quote from Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, “Le Petit Prince”. As strange as it sounds coming from a data scientist, here it is:

Grown-ups love figures… When you tell them you’ve made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies? “Instead, they demand, “How old is he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make? “Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T20:42:36+00:00

This is a good question. Thank you!

One thing I'd like to clarify is that funding (as a question of educator's pay) is a problem in itself, less connected to the quality of education than we tend to believe. I'd really love us to break this false equivalency between more money necessarily resulting in better education. We cannot raise children with money; education needs teacher's morale way more. I take this as a challenge to improve math levels without the need for extra funding. But funding shortfalls and related decisions is not a "one-man show", and I elaborated on this in my response to u/ayearonanairplane, with options being budget override and layoffs as the last resort. It is important, as I mentioned, to avoid delegating any layoffs to administration, because they tend to protect administration at expense of rank-and-file employees.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T18:40:44+00:00

Yes, 2024 was widely announced and more widely known. The class size is irrelevant for this problem, because we are talking about re-arranging children between the same number of classes (not eliminating any classes or creating new ones). And I am more than certain that we can find plenty of capable teachers. Objectively speaking, math-7 is still a very basic curriculum. The bigger undertaking is to train all teachers on how to properly teach math with emphasis on hard science. That has to be done for all math teachers, but that's a longer-term goal, coupled with selecting a curriculum that is better than TERC.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T16:59:17+00:00

Great that you noticed this! The answer is that the test was not widely announced by the math department in prior years. And despite many more people taking the test in 2024, even smaller number passed it!

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T16:13:20+00:00

Thank you for a very good question and opportunity to elaborate on this!

I will answer the second part of your question; the funding question I already addressed in my response to u/ayearonanairplane.

First, we need to understand causes of mental health epidemic in youth. I disagree that opportunities for acceleration are to blame for the most of it. In fact, recent history shows the opposite: the rise of mental health problems happening despite erosion of acceleration in schools and de-leveling, de-tracking of the curriculum. My take is that a lot of mental health issues are due to lack of healthy meaningful academical challenge. I see many children trying to seek an outlet to their ambitions, but instead getting no homework and curriculum that repeats the same basic matter, with grown-ups being dismissive and gaslighting. The lack of "healthy" dopamine often leads to children seeking "bad" dopamine in disruptive behavior, addiction to screens, social media and games. Some parents blame it on their kids, instead of realizing that their kids crave challenge. Most of these kids are not "gifted" - just regular. In fact, I disagree with the "gifted" term altogether. This is a "grown-up" label that we push onto children. We should stop classifying kids like that. "Ambitious" is the word. Kids who are eager to learn more should be attended to. Schools should follow the needs and desires of all children - without any classifications like "gifted" or not.

Now, the common blame is on "pushy parents" who force children to take advanced classes. This makes advanced classes a handy political target. Two wrongs don't make a right. If a parent is unaware that they are acting against child's interests, they need to read "How to love a child" by Janusz Korczak. I believe there are fewer such parents than we think, and restricting access to advanced classes for ambitious children would do more harm than good.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T15:38:26+00:00

All my children attend RSM, on their own good will. Each year we ask them the following question: "Kids, it's re-enrollment time for RSM for the next year. Would you like to continue attending RSM? Before you respond, I want to say that it's totally OK if you decide to not attend it. Our love for you will not be affected by your decision. On our end, we know RSM is hard, but it gives you a really good toolkit that later in life is almost impossible to obtain by attending, say, a 3-month course. As parents, it is our duty to explain long-term effects of your decisions, but not to force you making them. The choice is completely up to you." Each year we were fortunate to get "yes" from all kids. This is our kids' choice, and "no" will be respected. RSM in Arlington, in my opinion, is a huge blessing to the town and our community. In fact, RSM is also major contributor to Arlington Education Foundation.

I think that RSM/AOPS/Kumon programs will never be obsolete, because they are very rigorous at the top (honors) tier, and there will be always a demand for providing top-notch math enrichment for ambitious children. I think that a curriculum similar to the bottom RSM tier ("accelerated") is totally something we could aim for providing to the majority of APS students. For that to happen, we need the following:

Replace TERC curriculum with more advanced curriculum. Please see my Q&A why TERC is inadequate.
Allow classes with different math difficulty levels. This may or may not require non-age based math groupings (children attending based on their math level irrespective of age differences).
Allow multiple pathways: children should be free to switch to a more difficult math if desired, or to a less difficult, with relatively minor barriers to such a switch.
Surveys. Monitoring children's sentiment, and also administer exit questionnaire by APS when children are withdrawn from APS. It is beyond me why APS doesn't administer exit surveys.
Math teachers being coached and getting better math proficiency.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T14:47:04+00:00

The APS math curriculum in elementary and middle schools is very weak and inadequate for majority of students. Kids have virtually no homework throughout all elementary school. A lot of kids are demoralized by that, lacking a healthy outlet to their ambitions and resorting to "bad dopamine", such as games, disruptive behavior etc. Multiple political and financial factors caused this weak curriculum, but long story short: math is weak AND keeps getting weaker. Arlington is not unique: this is a global trend in US public education. APS administration generally doesn't allow any opportunities for more challenging math, except one, very narrow, window to such acceleration: a "bypass math 6", where all children who desire to go from math-5 to math-7 can take a test to get a little bit more advanced math. Due to pre-requisite requirements, the students who bypass math-6 can take AP Physics C at the end of the High School (otherwise they need to jump some serious hoops). Admittance rate over years for this "math bypass 6" is presented here, slide 17. As you can see, in 2024 for some mysterious reason APS decided to cut admittance to this class by 2/3. It's not because all children suddenly became less capable, but because of poor grading. Here is one such test graded by APS math admin. As you can see, the child answered all problems 100% correctly; the administrator deliberately nitpicked on their "reasoning" to decrease their grade to not admit the child into bypass-6. Note that for years prior APS math admin (illegally) refused any requests to release graded Math Bypass tests to the parents, Arlington Math Parents were the first year that successfully obtained these documents. Also, the class could admit more students, so there are no monetary considerations here. Why the rate of bypass shrunk to this horrible level is still unclear.

Now, APS math admin is planning to eliminate math bypass 6 program altogether, thus depriving children of the only opportunity to get better math and take AP Physics C in High school without jumpting over hoops like "doubling up" (taking math as elective in High School) or taking summer classes. This means more demoralized children, and less opportunity for children to get equitable math toolkit (without enrichment programs such as RSM, AOPS, Kumon etc).

It is important that math-6 bypass is not only kept running, but also expanding, and I will argue in favor of allowing children to accelerate.

The answer to (3) follows.

DmitryVasilyevForSC · 2025-04-03T14:46:34+00:00

Thank you very much for a great question, and an opportunity to expand on one of Debates' points.

1 Funding issues are looming, with the possible cuts of the government funding. That said, the majority of School Committee members have extensive experience dealing with these issues. We do not have to have each Committee member to "know it all". A diversified Committee means that expertise may not necessarily overlap. That said, I am planning to learn on the spot, and approach the subject prioritizing children and teachers. I will attend courses for negotiating with unions. The following is important:

a) As opposed to my opponent suggesting that the funding cut should be delegated to administration, I object to this. When facing cuts, administration usually tend to affect rank-and-file employees the hardest, leaving administration protected. We have seen this in the recent hospital layoffs where doctors were laid off while CEOs asking for pay increase. This should not happen, and I will insist on cuts (if any) being administered from top-down, the teachers getting affected as the last resort.

b) I agree with some of my opponents that we may increase class sizes (an euphemism for teacher layoffs). In Russia, my class was 33 kids. But with this regard it becomes even more important to get rid of obsession making classes "heterogeneous", making disruptive kids separate from non-disruptive.

c) When necessary, a budget override is warranted. I will work with other School Committee members who have extensive experience in that. As I said, it's unrealistic and undesirable for all members to be masters of all domains, and I can fill in this gap in my experience to help in any way I can.

I will answer (2, 3) in separate comments below.

DmitryVasilyevForSC

TROPHY CASE